With the sun in his eyes and a light meter in his hand, lighting designer Robert Barnhart tackled his 18thSuper Bowl Halftime Show, when the 50th annual NFL championship game kicked off on February 7, 2016. The timing was such that the sun was a deciding factor in the success of the lighting for a show featuring superstars Coldplay, Bruno Mars, and Beyoncé.
“If it were 1pm, you’d know it was going to be bright with a consistent exposure, but going into sunset, the light level changes were enormous during the 12-minute show,” says Barnhart, who successfully juggled a combination of ambient light in the sky, a small portion of stadium lights, stage lighting, and followspots, all for the camera. “We started at 130 footcandles of ambient light in the sky and went down to about 45. In a 12-minute show, that’s a huge difference.”
Barnhart notes that the financial decision was made to have “no lights on the upper and middle level of seating except the sky. The risk was that if the game ran really late, we’d be in the dark on the upper deck for the finale card stunt. So with that commitment, we now had to make a decision about how much stadium light to leave on or turn off, in combination with the sun, and stage lighting to have the correct balance.” One of the givens was that “once the stadium lights are off, they are off for the entire show,” says Barnhart. “They take 15 minutes to cool and go back on for the third quarter.”
Not being sure exactly what time the show will start is another variable for the lighting team. “The game time can vary,” notes Barnhart, “We had many configuration scenarios at hand, and in this case, as the time got later for the show, we had to recue the stadium lights and the stage lighting, while [media server programmer/operator] Jason Rudolph had to reconfigure the video levels. The later we got, the more sun we were losing. That was becoming the nightmare as we went later and later into the second quarter. Another 10 minutes later, and the upper deck would have been dark to the camera.
“TV lighting, you have to look at what you don’t have control over, such as the sun, while you also balance what you do have control over,” Barnhart continues. “Take the card stunt at the end of the show for example: the upper level, lit by the sky, to the lower level and field lit by a portion of stadium lights, and finally the stage itself lit by us. I think the math paid off.”
There were two card stunts for this year’s Halftime Show. “The audience had two-sided cards with a color on each side and holes so they could see what they are doing and see the show,” explains Barnhart. The cards, which spelled out “Believe In Love,” came with instructions on how to be part of the Halftime Show: Hold to your face, turn it around at this point, etc. “It worked really well this time,” the LD adds. “I have noticed over the years, more and more the audience wants to be a part of the action, so the card stunt worked. It’s a big show and people want to be part of it.”
A Setting Sun And Golden Fixtures
The stage lighting included 36 Clay Paky A.leda B-Eye K20s behind performers on field trusses. “There were four pyro carts upstage of the main stage,” says Barnhart. “We didn’t want them to look like trusses with nothing happening. So we used the B-Eyes to add to the kaleidoscope vibe in the deck video and continue it in the background when you can’t see the LED stage floor. The overhead cable cam, used for the game, was also used for the overhead shots. There is very complicated choreography between that camera and the pyro, as any pyro could damage the cameras fly cables.”
For the Bruno Mars stage, there were GLP X4 Bar 10s and 20s added to the staircase, while the stage itself was outlined with Ayrton MagicBlade-R fixtures. “You could see Bruno Mars stage in the wide shots when looking at the Coldplay stage,” points out Barnhart. “This allowed us to mimic the LED floor. It could then become active for Bruno’s performance.”
When Beyoncé made her dramatic entrance on the field, she was backlit with 72 Harman Martin Professional Atomic LED Strobes. “We would have used more if we could have gotten them, but it worked out well, with smoke and light blowing into a camera lens, a nice special effect, kind of a silhouette look.
There were also six gold Clay Paky Sharpy fixtures—gold for the 50th Super Bowl— to add more movement to the light. “It’s hard to get big beams in daylight, so we tried to limit our use of profile type fixtures, but used these to add some dynamics," says Barnhart.
More than 470 Chroma-Q Color Block 2s were placed around the stadium perimeter on the three rails allocated by the NFL. “We wrapped them past the end zones, to add to the kaleidoscope color on the stage and match Coldplay’s theme, with all encompassing full color. We wanted to bring the whole stadium into that vibe,” Barnhart points out. “On the center rail, we added 16 TMB Solaris LED Flares to add more punch and more physical size to fill the screen.”
For more utilitarian lighting, Barnhart squeezed 48 PRG Best Boy HPs between the stadium lights. “We needed to light the performance stage above and beyond what the ambient and stadium light was doing,” he notes. “This gave our lighting director Pete Radice the tools to maintain the balance of the dropping light levels. The rigging company, Stage Rigging, had to figure it out when they got up there, and they did. There were 24 lights each side of center. We also had to work around the NFL cameras, which are in all the best places so there is a lot of negotiation for placement to make it all work.”
In addition to the Best Boys, a total of 16 Arc Light Bright Box followspots helped pop the performers and adjust the overall lighting to the sky. “Even when Beyoncé was on the field with her dancers, there were a lot of followspots for sidelight,” the LD adds.
“The biggest challenge was the change of ambient light level from the beginning to the end of the show, a huge dip over the course of 12 minutes. We went out there every day to meter the time pocket, and Sunday was a brighter sunset than we had seen all week, with more breeze than usual. There was nothing in the atmosphere to slow down the light. I believe at the beginning of the show, we were keying at about 270FC by the final moment we were below 80FC. Fifteen minutes earlier it wouldn’t have been so dramatic a change,” says Barnhart. “Hats off to our head video shader Guy Jones, Rob Levy, and all the guys at CBS, for chasing the light levels. They did a great job.”
For additional information on the Super Bowl 50 Halftime Show, check out our full Project In Focus, sponsored by VER, and stay tuned for more coverage.